Maybe they were against a ‘national language’ before they were for it

May 20, 2006

I wish the Bush gang could keep its story straight.

[tag]President[/tag] George W. [tag]Bush[/tag] has long opposed making [tag]English[/tag] the country’s [tag]national language[/tag], Attorney General [tag]Alberto Gonzales[/tag] said on Friday, a day after the Senate voted to do so, but the White House said later Gonzales had got caught in a “[tag]linguistic snare[/tag].” […]

Gonzales did not directly address Bush’s position on the controversial amendment because the Senate has not yet voted on the whole bill. But he said that Bush has in the past rejected such efforts.

“The president has never supported making English the national language,” Gonzales said after meeting with state and local officials in Texas to discuss cooperation on enforcement of immigration laws.

He said Bush has instead long supported a concept called “English-Plus,” believing that it was good to be proficient in more than one language.

Wrong, said White House Press Secretary [tag]Tony Snow[/tag], who told reporters that the president supported the Senate effort to declare English the “national language.”

Hoping to explain the conflict, spokesperson Dana Perino said Gonzales “got caught in a linguistic snare,” and was referring to Bush’s opposition to an “[tag]official[/tag]” language, not a “national” language. Apparently, the whole issue a little too convoluted for the Bush gang.

Tell you what. Maybe after the president gets a firm grasp on the language, Republicans can get back to us.

As a trained lifeguard, it’s sort of hard to watch a man drown before your very eyes, but then, one of the first things they taught us is that the job of the lifeguard did not involved drowning too – they taught it very strongly that if you couldn’t get the victim to allow a rescue and they started taking you down, you had to let go.

By-bye Bushie, it wasn’t nice knowing you…. glub, glub, glub…

  • Frankly, I don’t much see the point of declaring English a national or an official language. People will continue to speak Spanish and other languages as they can and need to. Of course, we could be like the Canadians, where every sign has to be in French and English, but we’re not such liberal whimps 😉

    There is no way to really satisfy this nativism, short of forcing everybody to learn English, which is pretty much already the rule in Education and Immigration policy already. So what is the point of this?

    Oh yah, make the Know-Nothings happy.

  • So will someone please explain to me the difference between the “national language” and the “official language”?

  • The whole world is learning English, without US Senate votes. People will do what they must in order to make money or land a commercial airliner. It’s a self-regulating market.

    FWIW, here’s the official breakdown as of the last census: English 82.1%, Spanish 10.7%, other Indo-European 3.8%, Asian and Pacific island 2.7%, other 0.7% (2000 census, CIA World Factbook).

    I do think Democrats have carried “the other side” of the argument to ridiculous extremes, when a school district must be able to call on (and pay) speakers of 150 languages in order to complete the already difficult job of teaching in public schools, or when a ballot must be printed in a dozen languages. I also wouldn’t mind referring to the language spoken by the dominant language group in our country as “American” rather than “English” (we don’t “labour” or put luggage in the “boot” of our cars).

  • All this parsing of “national” vs. “official” language from a man who in 2000 claimed he didn’t do nuance?

  • In the president’s case, the program might be called “English-Minus”.

  • Cooper–good idea: Let’s shorten that to E- or E minus. The grade between D and F that Bush gets for his version of English. 🙂

  • It’s important in the context of assimilation.

    And this isn’t trouble for Bush actually, but trouble for the Democrats.

    The politicians of course have better polling info than we do, and what I see, is the Democrats pandering a bit too much to the right of center.

    So they’re reading the tea leaves as their base not being as important as the squishy middle. Hence, the “national” language issue even passing at all. A number of Democrats had to get on board for that, and some of those names are quite surprising.

  • Who knew that First Amendment right of “Freedom of Speech” only applied to speech in English? I guess when its in another language it isn’t really speech…

  • I have to admit that having my ballot printed in 6 languages kind of pisses me off.

  • “Got caught in a linguistic snare”.

    That’s a good one – I’ll remember that. Like, the next time my wife says, “Why does our ‘History’ folder for last night show 256 pages visited at teentorture.com, when you told me you were staying up late to download tax forms?” I can say, “Oooh, sorry, honey, I guess I got caught in a lingiustic snare”.

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